


two-headed calf

by jewishfitz



Category: I Am In Eskew (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Eskew-ness, Gen, POV First Person, sorry! that's the style, stars? stars.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26159716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jewishfitz/pseuds/jewishfitz
Summary: Notes on terror, wonder, and unexpected beauty.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	two-headed calf

**Author's Note:**

> This just sort of... happened. Enjoy?
> 
> I’ve always really admired Eskew's prose, so it was really fun to try writing something in that style! Title is from the poem Two-Headed Calf by Laura Gilpin, which has always kind of reminded me of David Ward. Unbeta'd, all mistakes are my own.

Eskew is a strange place. This may seem obvious, yes, but it's worth repeating every now and again so that you don’t become used to it, so that you don’t become complacent in your own estrangement from the normal world, the world you once belonged to. Say it like a prayer, three times in the mirror every morning, to keep the strangeness at bay. Say it, and maybe you’ll remain unchanged for just a little bit longer.

Some days, most days, the strangeness is so obvious that it feels like something physical, oppressive and omnipresent like a thick fog. Looking at the buildings, the people, it can’t be avoided. It is as fundamental as the laws of physics. Every angle in the city’s geometry, every glance from a passerby, every sound that travels through the streets screams _wrong, wrong, wrong._

Believe it or not, those are the good days. Those are the days when I feel most myself. Although the self is, like most abstract concepts in Eskew, a moving target.

The days that stand out, for me, are the days when the strangeness steps back.

No, not that. It doesn’t step back as much as change shape, like I’m looking at the strangeness from a different angle. In that different angle, the strangeness becomes something else, something new.

Am I making sense? Can you understand what I am trying to say?

Let me give you an example. The rain in Eskew is a constant, incessant, insistent thing. It demands your attention. You can forget about it, but only temporarily. You can tune it out like radio static, but it always careens back into focus at the least opportune moment. When you’re waiting for your train and your umbrella snaps in the wind, that’s the rain making itself known. That’s _Eskew_ making itself known.

But the rain isn’t bad. We can’t ascribe our words, petty small things like “good” and “bad” to the rain in Eskew. The rain is the rain is the rain is the rain. Sometimes, that rain is beautiful. Who hasn’t ever seen glistening cobblestones and concrete, or heard the melodic drip drip drip coming off of a neon sign, and thought, even if just for a moment, that something divine was at work?

As I’ve said before, Eskew is a city of wonders, too.

Wonder is the right word for it, the thing that I feel when I see the buildings of the Stranger’s Quarter from just the right angle. It implies admiration, yes, but also a healthy amount of fear. I am filled with wonder when I look at the stars, what few I can see in the city’s glow, but I still know that they are unfathomable spheres of nuclear fusion. Fear and wonder often go hand in hand.

Eskew is strange, but its strangeness is not entirely devoid of some terrible beauty. The lights shining on the river at sunset, dancing in the rain like holy fire. The buildings in Oldtown after dark, whose lit windows look like the eyes of some towering creature. The treacherous architecture of the Commemoration Gallery, even after everything, was still a sight to behold.

This is where I find myself, when I think these circular thoughts late at night with the rain drumming its demanding rhythm upon my windowpane. I have seen such terrors here, but such wonders too. Terrible beauty is, afterall, still a kind of beauty.

The wonder, of course, does not outweigh the fear. I don't think it ever will. Observing Eskew is not like watching a far-off constellation. I do not have the luxury of distance. I doubt even Galileo could stargaze from within the sun’s heart.

So the fear outweighs the wonder, but it does not erase it entirely.

It would be foolish of me to hold the wonder in my heart like some kind of victory, though. Eskew has long since stripped me of that kind of naiveté. If it is not a victory, though, then what is it? That’s what I sat down here to decide, what that measure of beauty is to me. A consolation? An apology? Or is it without meaning, a casualty of experience in this system that is far too big to ever notice something as small, as human, as someone who bothers to watch the rain fall on the river every once and awhile.

Is that human, to look for beauty even in senseless tragedy? Maybe. I’m not sure that I’m qualified to say one way or another. Not anymore.

Eskew is a strange place. If I say that enough, will the words lose their meaning? Will I have to find a new incantation to keep the rain at bay?

The stars are out tonight. Not many, but a few. Perhaps I will go up my building’s narrow and damp stairwell. Perhaps I will climb until I find a door to the roof. Perhaps I will pick its lock, or perhaps it will be unlocked already, waiting for me with intentions unknown. Perhaps I will find a place to sit and settle, far from the rooftop's edge. 

Perhaps I will go out into the rain, watch the stars, and take a small moment of beauty where I can.

Be with you again soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr [@nojoyinmudville](https://nojoyinmudville.tumblr.com/) for more nonsense! And please talk to me about I Am In Eskew. I am dying to talk about I Am In Eskew.
> 
> (also, kudos to whoever spots the Ghost Quartet “reference”)


End file.
